When Cut Copy came back for its first encore last night in the Newport Music Hall, it played the
relatively dreamy
Walking in the Sky. The tune, backed by a video of an empty, undulating sea, suggested,
perhaps unintentionally, the soul-searching surrounding the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight
370.

Perhaps it was a much-needed breather after more than an hour of the nonstop, pounding dance
music — ecstatic and hopeful — that created a communal celebration. If Cut Copy’s message for that
hour was simple and maybe a little naive, it sure felt good.

Most of it came from the Australian band’s current album
Free Your Mind, a collection that fine-tunes the groove and attitude of its first three.
Though the album has a personal stylistic thread running through, it makes no bones about its
influences.

The title track is a case in point, though its precursor states the same sentiment a little
differently. Where George Clinton’s Funkadelic suggested
Free Your Mind and Your A-- Will Follow, more than 40 years of history and changing sexual
mores have allowed Cut Copy to eliminate Step 2.

Which the quartet did from Tune 1, the at once personal and utopian
We Are Explorers, with its insistent groove, led by bassist Ben Browning, who doubled on
timbales for a few bars.

The groove got harder later in the set, as its subtle musical underpinning evolved. Along the
way it nodded toward the ’70s pop take on disco trafficked by the likes of Blondie.

It also paid tribute in
Hearts On Fire to post-punk icons New Order with a bass line and a punctuating guitar
riff.
Take Me Higher was a slower tune that ended like muscular Brit-pop;
Where I’m Going echoed the Beach Boys.

But none of it lost the beat and the ever-threatening break into manic frugging. If there was an
optimism, perhaps half-baked, blame it on the rhythm’s upfull call to dance.

Turkish Prison opened the show, followed by Jessy Lanza, a singer who might have gotten her
first inspiration from Portishead, laying gauzy vocals on top of little more than a drum machine’s
beat and a few organ fills of her own doing.